Hong Kong International School

Sometime this summer, at least one young English teacher will cram his belongings into cases and head to London's Heathrow airport to catch a flight to Hong Kong. He will arrive, ready to stand in front of a classroom of Hong Kong schoolchildren and solve problems with the present perfect.

With the school year almost over, Shea Stanley is fast sharpening her summer camp savvy. She's been searching for the ideal camp for her 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Tatum. With a smorgasbord of choices, Stanley is planning on school camp, ballet camp, swim classes and 'perhaps something new; we are looking at gymnastics'.

When the Hong Kong International School (HKIS) was faced with the challenge of operating as a 'virtual' school, it did so with relative ease as teachers and students were already used to working collaboratively online.

If I could go back 24 hours, I would definitely be in my room at about 12 o'clock in the afternoon. One of the features of being a child is being a professional procrastinator - someone who postpones work because of laziness.

At Hong Kong International School, with the most expensive tuition in the city, the head of school serves only at the approval of a church council more than 12,000 kilometres away in the American Midwest.

In my opinion, the most important human sense after sight is the sense of smell. The special characteristic of spices is the exquisite scent of each individual spice. So the one way blind people would be able to distinguish one spice from another is by smell.

Despite the high fees, a place in one of Hong Kong's top international schools is more highly prized than ever. But demand currently far exceeds supply, a fact bemoaned by expat and local parents alike.